State unemployment offices came under tremendous pressure during the pandemic — not only because of the mass of people trying to access benefits, as well as significant fraud, but also because of often sluggish and even outdated technology.
Now, with that pandemic pressure finally easing, officials across the country are tackling scores of updates and similar projects. The following excerpt from a broader story is a look at the challenges and issues in California that foreshadow the future of unemployment services, which are among the main sources of connection between citizens and their governments:
California was battered by billions in fraud perpetrated by people that took advantage of relaxed eligibility rules used to speed economic relief during the pandemic. It happened in a lot of states, in fact, though the scale was uniquely large given California’s population of nearly 40 million residents.
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Rita Gass, chief information officer for the California Employment Development Department (EDD), offered an almost dizzying update on how that state is improving its unemployment system. In fact, Gass counted some 200 IT projects over the last 18 months in her department — a good indication of all the work that needs to be done.
For her agency, those changes include creating a cybersecurity division — a reflection of the increasingly tight focus at all levels of government on defending against hackers and other criminals. The general idea is to not only increase digital protections but do so in a way that consolidates and unifies cybersecurity functions across multiple areas of EDD.
“Existing systems are stable and able to continue to process claims and provide service,” Gass said via email. “However, the customer-centered, advanced fraud mitigation and security enhancements EDD wants to achieve will require a modern platform,” and those are on the horizon with the state’s modernization push, EDDNext.
The state has budgeted for new positions, including in cybersecurity and anti-fraud efforts, and officials expect that to grow as EDDNext continues. It’s a complex project that involves integrating three systems into one.
Gass offered greater detail about planned improvements underway during the project’s first phase:
“We are reconfiguring call processes and incorporating multilingual functionality, building a single sign-on account for all our benefit programs, researching with customers the best way to improve our benefit applications and forms and designing enhancements, and strengthening our training materials to better support and empower staff to deliver excellent customer service.”
This story from the March issue of Government Technology magazine, a sister publication of Industry Insider — California, is part of a larger look at modernizing state systems. Click here to read the rest of the feature.
